Department Chair of Anthropology and Professor

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Biography

I conduct long-term behavioral and ecological field research on several species in the primate community of Amazonian Ecuador to investigate the ways in which ecological conditions (such as the abundance and distribution of food resources) and the strategies of conspecifics together shape primate behavior and social relationships and ultimately determine the kinds of societies we see primates living in. This is a crucial and central focus in evolutionary anthropology, as understanding the ways in which behavior and social systems are shaped by environmental pressures is a fundamental part of the discipline.

I complement my field studies with molecular genetic laboratory work in order to address issues that are typically difficult to explore through observational studies alone, including questions about dispersal behavior, gene flow, mating patterns, population structure, and the fitness consequences of individual behavior. In collaboration with colleagues, I have also started using molecular techniques to investigate a number of broader questions concerning the evolutionary history, social systems, and ecological roles of various New World primates.

ANT 347C •
Methods In Primate Biology

31335 •
Spring 2013
Meets
W 100pm-200pm SAC 5.172

This course focuses on the study of primate behavior and the methods by which animal behavior is observed and documented. Students will learn how to conduct library research, formulate hypotheses and predictions, devise research projects to test these predictions, collect and analyze data, and write comprehensive research reports describing these results.

Spehar, S.N., Link, A., and Di Fiore, A. 2010. Male and female range use in a group of white-bellied spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. American Journal of Primatology 72:129-141.

Di Fiore, A. 2010. The influence of social systems on primate population genetic structure: An agent-based modeling approach. [SOCIOR Conference on Social Systems: Demographic and Genetic Issues, University of Rennes, Paimpont, France]

Schmitt, C.A., and Di Fiore, A. 2010. The influence of social cohesion on the development of sex-specific association patterns in juvenile atelin primates. [XXIIIrd Congress of the International Primatological Society, Kyoto, Japan]

Schmitt, C.A. and Di Fiore, A. 2010. The interaction of social organization and juvenile risk aversion: A case study in atelin primates. [79th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists]

Spehar, S.N. and Di Fiore, A2008. The role of long-distance vocalizations in regulating association patterns and social interactions in white-bellied spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth). American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement 46: 199. [77th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists] [31]

Di Fiore, A. and Fernandez-Duque, E. 2007. A comparison of paternal care in three socially-monogamous neotropical primates. American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement 44: 99-100. [76th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists] [30]

Di Fiore, A. and Rendall, D. 1993. The evolution of primate social organization: A role for phylogeny. American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement 16: 81. [62nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists] [2]

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Rodman, P.S. and Di Fiore, A. 1993. Effects of group size and resource dispersion on foraging efficiency of primates: A simulation model. American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement 16: 166. [62nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists] [1]

Field Work

I am, first and foremost, a field primatologist, and I either am directly involved in or supervise a very diverse array of field studies on New World primates. The major portion of my field research takes place at two different sites in the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in Amazonian Ecuador – at the Proyecto Primates Research Area, which I established in 1994 as a Ph.D. student with Dr. Peter Rodman (UC Davis), and at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, located approximately 40 km away. Both of these sites are home to a diverse primate community consisting of 10 to 12 different species. Additionally, I collaborate on a number of projects involving fieldwork in other New World sites outside of Ecuador.

Some of my ongoing field projects are described in more detail below. But first, I'd like to thank the project alumni(colleagues, students, and assistants listed below) that have been part of Proyecto Primates over the last few decades.

Research Overview

Behavior and Ecology of Ateline Primates

Ateline primates – howler monkeys, woolly monkeys, spider monkeys, and muriquis – are a closely related group of New World monkeys that shared a common ancestor roughly 16 million years ago and that, today, manifest marked differences in foraging strategies and patterns of social organization, making them an excellent natural system for comparative study. Interestingly, however, all members of this clade of primates are characterized by a tendency for females to disperse from their natal social groups prior to reproduction and for some degree of male philopatry, which are both features of social organization that they share with the African great apes.

Prompted by this convergence with African hominoids (and, presumably, with our earliest human ancestors), much of my field research to date has centered on ateline primates. In my doctoral research and in follow-up work as a postdoctoral fellow, I focused on documenting the natural history, time allocation patterns, ranging behavior, diet, and foraging strategies of lowland woolly monkeys (Lagothrix poeppigii), particularly as they relate to conditions of changing resource abundance. The results of some of this work – including the unexpected significance of animal prey foraging for this otherwise largely frugivorous primate – are outlined in my publications on the ecological strategies and ranging behavior of woolly monkeys.

My more recent field work on atelines has focused on woolly monkey social behavior and population genetic structure and on comparing the social behavior, foraging strategies, seed dispersal behavior, and cognitive ecology of woolly monkeys with those of sympatric white-bellied spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) a closely-related primate that differs markedly in social organization. These various field projects, conducted in collaboration with several of my current graduate students, form the basis for a number of recent publications and presentations at professional meetings.

A second area of my ongoing fieldwork concerns several other members of the Yasuní primate community. Since 2002, I have been conducting a long-term study of the evolution of “monogamous” or "pair-bonded" social systems in primates using three species of New World monkeys – owl monkeys, titi monkeys, and sakis – as models. This work represents an international collaboration with Dr. Eduardo Fernandez-Duque (Fundación ECO, Argentina and CRES (Conservation and Research for Endangered Species), Zoological Society of San Diego), who studies one of these taxa (owl monkeys) at his field site in Argentina.

Monogamy is a rare social system in mammals, and the specific pressures leading to its evolution are still debated. Early hypotheses forwarded to explain the evolution of monogamy tended to fall into one of two classes. Some proposed that monogamy evolved in response to the need for biparental care in order to successfully rear offspring, while others envisioned monogamy as the default social system imposed upon males in cases where the dispersion of females makes it difficult for single males to successfully defend access to more than one. More recently, emphasis has turned to the role of direct mate guarding of individual females by males and to the importance of specific male-female bonds as an infanticide-prevention strategy, with "monogamy" then emerging as a tradeoff between the competing reproductive strategies of males and females. In this project, we are trying to evaluate these various hypotheses for the origin and maintenance of monogamy in primates using a comparative approach, collecting comparable behavioral, ecological, demographic, and genetic data on all three genera at my study site in Ecuador and on one of the taxa (owl monkeys) at study sites in both Ecuador and Argentina. As an additional component of this project, I am currently working in the laboratory to develop novel molecular genetic markers to allow paternity and population structure analyses for these monogamous species.

Tropical Forest Biodiversity and Phenology

Primatologists interested in how ecological conditions shape the behavior and social strategies of their study subjects must also collect detailed data on the diversity, abundance, and distribution of resources of potential importance. Thus, a third area of my ongoing fieldwork focuses on documenting and understanding spatial patterns in plant diversity and temporal patterns of flowering and fruiting in neotropical forests. Since 1994, almost without interruption, my team has been collecting data every month on the phenological status of a large subset of the trees located in five hectares of botanical plots that were established at the onset of my studies. This now represents one of the largest databases of phenological information available for an Amazonian rainforest site. Additionally, some of my plots are periodically recensused to look at temporal changes in floristic composition and biomass. These data form a part of the Amazon Forest Inventory Network (RAINFOR) database, which compiles information from a large set of Amazonian rainforest sites for the purposes of monitoring the long-term dynamics and productivity of these forests in response to global climate change.

Collaborators and Current Field Research Team

Sebastian Ramirez

Kelsey Ellis

Robyn Reeder

Lucy Millington

Andres Link

Laura Abondano

Eduardo Fernandez Duque

Ana Maria Pardo

Colin Addis

Primate Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab

Location: SAC 5.184Number: 512.471.6716

Molecular Genetics

Since my postdoctoral training in the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, I have been using molecular genetic techniques to complement my field studies as well as the field studies of other scientists. Much of the early work in this area benfitted from the Molecular Anthropology Laboratory at New York University.

Investigations of New World Monkey Social Systems: In the lab, we use molecular techniques to study the dispersal patterns, mating systems, and population structure of various New World primates. Although many of the taxa we work with have subjects of long-term observational studies in the wild, it is difficult to get a complete picture of mating systems and dispersal patterns using observational data only.

New World Monkey Phylogenetics and Phylogeography: Through collaborations with various colleagues (Dr. Todd Disotell, Dr. Jessica Lynch Alfaro, Dr. Liliana Cortes-Ortiz) and former students (Dr. Alba Morales, Dr. Andres Link), I am also beginning to address questions concerning the phylogeny, evolutionary history, and biogeography of several New World primates.

Methodological Contributions: In the course of my genetic work, I have been involved in the development and application of several methodological innovations with broader impact for molecular ecological studies of primates, including a "subtractive hybridization enrichment" protocol that facilitates the isolation of new microsatellite loci from a taxon. More recently, I developed a rapid and simple PCR-based test for determining the sex of a primate DNA sample that should be of use to many primatologists. While several molecular methods had already been developed for sex assignment in humans, very few had proven useful in other primates. By contrast, my sex-typing assay is applicable to taxa from across the primate order and can be effectively used on even the small amounts of DNA recovered from noninvasively collected samples such as hair or feces.